David Jeffery Wineland

David Wineland is a Philip H. Knight Distinguished Research Chair and Research Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He also holds positions at NIST and the University of Colorado in Boulder. Wineland is recognized for achieving one of the first demonstrations of laser cooling of ions to near absolute zero. His experiments have been used to test theories in quantum physics and contributed to the development of laser-cooled atomic clocks, the current state-of-the-art for time and frequency standards. His work also demonstrated the elements of quantum computers, which use the rules of quantum physics to potentially solve important problems which are intractable using current computer technology. He received the National Medal of Science in 2007 and shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics with Prof. Serge Haroche, Collège de France, Paris.